AFT-NH Testimony on HB 1353

From Debrah Howes, President AFT-NH

This totally unnecessary bill creates the false and frankly insulting impression that we have rampant problems with educator misconduct in so many of our public schools that it can only be solved by granting unprecedented investigatory power to the head of the Department of Education! Nobody wants the kind of person who would hurt students to stay in a position where they can ever do it again, whether that is as an educator, a volunteer, a sports coach, a clergy person or any other adult a child might encounter. However, when this proposal to give the commissioner subpoena power was introduced last year in an amendment to HB 533, a bill relative to public school human rights complaints we heard that there really isn’t a huge problem with educator misconduct in the Granite State. In discussion of that subpoena amendment in March 2023, the chief investigator for the Department of Education testified that there are very few instances of public school educator misconduct that result in loss of license. And an attorney for the Department of Education testified that when investigating potential violations of the Educator Code of Ethics or Code of Conduct, the department was usually able to get the information it needed, but it might need to wait until a local school district had finished an employment investigation first. She could point to no specific case where students were left in an unsafe situation due to the department having to wait while local districts followed the policies adopted by duly elected school boards.

More Voucher Expansion Bills Up Next

Urgent Action Needed

Good news, bad news.  Two big victories and a very narrow defeat in the attempt to keep public money in public schools this week.  A bi-partisan group of lawmakers defeated both unlimited school voucher bills this week on strong bi-partisan votes. Your voices helped move lawmakers and made sure that the two universal school voucher bills were defeated. However, school vouchers were still expanded to 500 % of the federal poverty level, which in NH is $156,000 for a family of four when HB1665 was passed 190-189. One more single vote could have changed the outcome – it was that close! Then, even though this bill was supposed to go to House Finance due to the obvious financial impact it would have on the state, and come back to the House floor for a second vote, anti-public education extremist politicians decided there was no need to send it there. Instead, the bill will go directly to the Senate. Be ready to take action when it gets scheduled for a hearing on the Senate side. This one will not only hurt our students and our public schools, it will also raise your local property taxes.

The law this bill seeks to repeal does its work of silencing appropriate and necessary classroom conversations because it never clearly explains exactly what is allowed and what is not. It threatens punishment up to and including the loss of teaching credentials and career if someone subjectively feels you have somehow violated the boundaries of law. We have had a year and a half to see how this works in schools and how it robs our public-school students of the robust education they deserve.

Part-time uncertified employees would not have the tool kit certified teachers develop through their teacher preparation programs, practicums, student teaching, internships, and years on the job. Teaching is an art, craft, and skill as much as it is the knowledge of content that one is trying to convey to the student. When you have uncertified teachers, it is the students who lose. In fact, research shows that having an uncertified teacher is equivalent to losing 2 months of instructional time each year. Don’t shortchange our public school students!

For all these reasons, it does not make sense to allow noncredentialled individuals, who are not professional teachers to work in our public schools and call themselves educators. Our students deserve to have their needs considered and they deserve professional, credentialed teachers.